Letter from MDRI to Olli Rehn, EU Commissioner

September 22, 2006

Commissioner Ollie Rehn
European Union
Brussels , Belgium

Dear Mr. Rehn,

I am writing to urge the EU to take steps to ensure that the government of Romania is held accountable for human rights violations of children and adults with disabilities and that incentives be used to bring about meaningful reforms. If and when Romania is accepted for accession to the EU, the accession agreement should include a “safeguards” clause to ensure future monitoring of rights and to link the use of structural adjustment funds to specific safeguards for the protection of rights and community integration of people with disabilities.

Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) is a human rights organization dedicated to the protection of people with mental disabilities worldwide. We have investigated human rights conditions of people with mental disabilities in 23 countries of Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East . The human rights abuses against children and adults with disabilities in Romania are among the most extreme and pervasive that we have observed in any country of the world.

Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) documented these abuses with regard to children in our May 2006 report, Hidden Suffering: Romania ’s Segregation and Abuse of Infants and Children with Disabilities. Since the release of MDRI’s report, our findings have been widely and independently corroborated – including findings from investigative reports at ITV News in Britain , ABC News in the United States , and Jornalul National in Romania . Human Rights Watch has issued a report Life Doesn’t Wait: Romania’s Failure to Protect and Support Children and Youth Living with HIV that documents abuses against a particularly vulnerable population of children with disabilities. The broader abuses against adults with disabilities – including large numbers of deaths by exposure – have been documented in recent years by the Center for Legal Resources and Amnesty International. As part of MDRI’s investigation in 2005 and 2006, we also found serious and widespread abuses of thous and s of individuals in adult institutions. These included freezing temperatures in institutions, lack of protection against sexual abuse, the improper use of physical and chemical restraints, unhygienic conditions, and arbitrary detention without due process.

We recommend the inclusion of a safeguard clause to require future international monitoring and national reporting of rights protections for this vulnerable population. It should establish clear benchmarks, including significant penalties if they are not met according to a clear time schedule. Benchmarks within one year should include:

Establishment of an independent monitoring body to report publicly on conditions in all institutions for children and adults. This report would include a comprehensive human rights assessment of conditions in all institutions under all national and local authorities. Such a survey and report will only be credible if non-governmental human rights and disability rights organizations are also guaranteed access to all institutions to produce independent reports. The monitoring body and NGO’s should be given a 24 hour right of access without notification and should be given the right to obtain and submit photographic and video evidence of their findings to the government.

Removal and prosecution of abusive staff – Where specific abuses are identified, the government must take action to remove the staff who are responsible for the abuse from positions where they can endanger other people. Abusers should be held accountable and prosecuted where criminal laws are violated.

Expansion of the maternal assistance and family support programs to prevent the ab and onment of babies and the breakup of families, particularly including children with disabilities. Romania should demonstrate a significant decline in the number of ab and oned babies below the current level of 9,000 per year.

Establishment and expansion of supported foster care programs and adoption to ensure that children with all levels of mental and physical disabilities now ab and oned in maternal wards of hospitals, placement centers, and other institutions have an opportunity to grow up with a family. An independent mechanism for monitoring human rights protection and quality of care in community programs must also be established. Children with disabilities should have the same right to services as all other children. Protections against any institutionalization of infants under law 272 should be extended to all children with disabilities.

Significant decline in the institutional population of children and adults with disabilities. The transfer of children or adults from large institutions to small institutions shall not be considered deinstitutionalization. To assess future progress, Romania must show that it is moving children to stable families or substitute families. Children in small institutions, even so-called “family-like” environments should be considered children in institutions for the purpose of this assessment.

We recognize that the government of Romania has made progress in recent years in reducing the number of children in institutions. A similar move toward community integration is needed for children and adults with disabilities. We are concerned that, under the guise of reform, scarce resources have been used to build new institutions rather than promoting true community integration. The “trans-institutionalization” of children to nearly 200 new institutions in the last three years has been documented by UNICEF and is described in Hidden Suffering. A similar pattern of misdirected reform is now taking place for adults. In his testimony to the United States Congress on September 13, the representative of the National Authority for Persons with H and icap, Adrian Mindroiu, reported that the government of Romania was building 10 new psychiatric institutions. The creation of new institutions will consign a new generation of people with disabilities to segregation from society. The EU should insist that any new funds for structural adjustment or assistance be used to support community integration and not new institutions.

Please contact me if you have any questions about these matters. MDRI would be pleased to provide the EU with assistance in further defining appropriate safeguards and /or creating a program for human rights oversight .You may reach me at 1-202-296-6550 or at erosenthal@mdri.org .

Thank you for your urgent attention to the human rights of children and adults with disabilities.

Sincerely,

Eric Rosenthal
Executive Director, MDRI